Seat Pan

For the last few weeks it has seemed like progress was not really moving on the bikes. The XV750 is so close to complete and the other bikes were at odd stages of work that were making it hard to move forward.

Earlier in the week we finally both had the real jobs give us some time, and both had a full day to dedicate to bikes. One of the main goals was to get the seat pans made for the XS850 and XS400. The only major parts left of the 850 are the seat, exhaust, and electrical. Other than that it is painting of some smaller parts and just tweaking and cleaning. We mocked up a good old cardboard pan for the 400 and then transferred both the shapes onto some plate steel. We were going to cut them out ourselves, but instead decided to head over to River Roofing and use their break and bender. After a few minutes of work we had the shape cut out. WAY faster and cleaner than the ol angle grinder. Thanks Craig!

A quick bend with a piece of equipment way too big for the job and the pan way pretty much shaped.

We did also make the pan for the XS400, but after some brainstorming we decided to do some much heavier modification to the frame to get the look we want. More on that soon over on the 400 build blog. Here is the shaped pan on the 850. Perfect.

The front of the pan is shaped to slide into a tab under the tank for a nice clean look, so we just needed to weld some bolts on the rear end to align everything. After the pan was mounted we re-shaped the seat foam a bit and dropped it off at the upholsterers. The finished seat should be done by Wednesday!

The next project was to extend the headers by 5 inches to clear the new baffle. We are ditching the entire muffler so having a decent length baffle in there will hopefully keep it quiet enough….. Pipe is marked and ready for cutting.

Eric gave it a quick weld and after some sanding we had the length we needed and are ready to paint and re-install!

2 comments

hey, the seat on the 850 looks awesome. do you have any pics of how the you mounted the seat? i’ll be attempting my first seat pan and i have a rear hoop like your bike and i’m going for that flat/brat style seat style. thanks